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Did you feel the hand of history on your shoulder,
Augustine?

I confess that I missed this scintillating piece of news yesterday; it emerged not so much with an earth shattering drum roll but more of a B-Flat squeak on an old violin.

The annals of history have been changed, no longer will generations of American school children be taught that Britain has no ‘written constitution’ – never totally accurate, what they mean is that no one has ever kept all the scraps of paper in one place, although Bagehot, Dicey and Erskine May made valiant efforts.

It was said that our constitution rested on the sovereignty of parliament, the simple fact that every four years we had the right to elect new representatives (down knee, down! Wait till the end, there will be a special knee jerking space provided) who would reflect the will of the people and could remake any law passed by the previous incumbents. That was our protection, our rights. Then we gave them away to the European Parliament, and puff! We had no constitution.

Yesterday, a humble grammar school boy from Battersea published – ta-ra! – the complete, unabridged version of the British Constitution. We barely noticed, even those of us in the political Blogosphere.

Naturally we weren’t consulted about our requirements in this ground breaking document, written almost exactly 800 years after Stephen Langton penned the foundation of the freedom of the individual against tyranny. It is not as elegant as ‘We the People’, more ‘I, the most important Civil Servant’. It does not look to a future free from tyranny, but sets in stone the mechanisms of the past by which we have come to be ruled.

The ‘Augustine’ of my title is better known to you as Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Battersea grammar school boy who rose to the highest echelons of the corridors of power, albeit that it was the exclusive Catholic fee paying Salesian College in Battersea.

He was set the task of producing a ‘written constitution’ by Gordon Brown – and thank God, Brown was ejected from No 10 before he could edit this final version, for it is remarkably free of Nu-Labour jargon.

We could have ended up with a written constitution that all those on incapacity benefit be given a mansion in Chelsea, that voters in Kirkcaldy each be granted 10 million pounds a year from the Bank profits, the mind boggles at the mischief Nu-Labour could have inflicted had we realised they were writing a constitution for us.

Prime Minister come and go, but Gus O’Donnell has the sticking power of the true Whitehall Mandarin, and he has continued with his lonely task in the palatial splendour of his suite of offices.

When Robin Butler occupied those offices, he was asked to describe our Constitution to Parliament; he replied, ‘it is something we make up as we go along’ – now it is set out in a formal document, and you literally could not make up the fact that this has crept up on the British without fanfare, penned by a Civil Servant – the ultimate ‘we’ of Butler’s statement.

‘We’ may elect our representatives every four years, but ‘we’ have no say in the ‘we’ that really holds control over this country.

You can gorge yourself on despair and angst – and read our new constitution document HERE. It is not, you will note, a ‘consultation document’, merely a statement of how the Whitehall Mandarins intend to rule us until we rise up against them……

The comments section of this post has been designated a safe area for knee jerking activities – please keep to the marked zones where specially trained staff will be on hand with smelling salts and other emergency aid.

One part of the old consitution that I’m sure did not make it into the new one as it has never been properly enforced is the stipulation that an MPs first duty is to the crown and his second to constituents. Party loyalty does not get a look in. Not surprising they don’t like to discuss it then.

Meanwhile as we are coming over all constitutional did anyone bother to check that Dave is a Natural Born Citizen?

PTDecember 15, 2010 at 14:56

Doesn’t matter what the constitution, if one exists, or the law, if that exists, say. The ruling class will do just as they please, and their friends in the media will justify it. Well, it worked for Hitler and Stalin, within N.Korea it works for the glorious, sooper-dooper leader, Berlusconi seems to scrape through, and I’m quite sure that our own democratically-elected and undemocratically-annointed parasites will have no difficulty, now or in the future, in doing the right thing. For themselves.

ZaphodDecember 15, 2010 at 13:36

I tried to read it, I really tried.Whimper. It hurts my brain. And one of my eyes is falling out.Twitch. Nghh…

Dave HDecember 15, 2010 at 12:30

I got a cabinet manual once, it gave instructions on how to assemble a pile of chipboard into a piece of furniture. Despite describing a highly complex operation it was only a few sides of A4, not 150 pages.

Perhaps we now need the British Citizens’ Manual, as a guide to how the rest of us should behave in our interactions with government:

“A citizen may at any time give the well-recognised two-fingered salute to any government busybody who seeks to interfere. Further interference may result in more extreme measures once this initial warning has been given”.

That should do it. It accounts for the British sense of fair play by providing a warning, and then it’s open season.

Andrew P WithersDecember 15, 2010 at 12:20

Arrrrrrgh- My 1974 Ford Cortina Manual was more interesting than this !

No mention of the great unwashed (us) mere cannon fodder

PericlesDecember 15, 2010 at 12:13

“[Sir] Gus O’Donnell* has the sticking power of the true Whitehall Mandarin …”

Strangely, having anticipated the words beyond ‘power of’, … I found I was wrong.

ΠΞ

* And people look askance at me when I say knighthoods and peerages are given to any-one these days !

I will order my copy from Waterstones immediately (Not dealing with Amazon since the Assange affair). I have the American constitution saved to my hard disc, and have actually read the bloody thing. As you say, it is elegantly written.

It has also proved to be a millstone around the Americans’ necks, with politically-appointed judges declaring every last jot to be unconstitutional. The latest is Obama’s health-care law — which we all thought to be safely passed even though highly flawed — being struck down. It’s a wonder that they can get anything done, and I’m sure we all look forward to the same state of affairs here.

I will read the new document carefully, and then follow your blue lights to a place where I can safely be sick. Many thanks.

Kevin BDecember 15, 2010 at 12:29

lenko, a good constitution is designed to stop the government doing things. It should be written so as to define the limits as to what the government can do. “Congress shall make no law …” seems to me to be a great way to start a clause in a document purporting to set out the relationship between government and people.

The problem with the Supreme Court is that they have stretched the two ‘get out’ clauses, ‘Interstate Commerce’ and ‘Necessary and Proper’ to such and extent that a man growing wheat to feed his chickens is ruled to be partaking in interstate commerce. The Judge who ruled against Obamacare decided that someone not buying health insurance was not. We will see if the Supremes agree.

Remember also that the USA is a federation of states and that the US constitution applies to what the Feds can do; the states each have their own constutions. If, (when?), Brussels passes a law defining how each individual EU state handles health care, we have only the Lisbon Treaty to protect us.

Of course, if you believe that the civil servants, (not the politicians), in Brussels or Washington or wherever know better than us how to handle health care then a constution that defines the limits to their power is a hinderance.

Me, I’d rather keep things as local as possible.

As to our own, British, constitution, we will, I’m sure, soon have a situation where this document conflicts with our Euro Treaty. I wonder which way the courts will rule?

Kevin B: ” a good constitution is designed to stop the government doing things”. Agreed. And the American constitution WAS so designed. Trouble is, a sub-class of humans called lawyers began to split constitutional hairs into finer and finer filaments, so that — like the Bible — it can be used to prove or disprove just about anything.

Lawyers like John Hoo have calculated that it’s OK to torture people, it’s OK to declare war on a country which hasn’t even threatened to invade you, because Americans are EXCEPTIONAL. God has chosen them to carry his message of love and freedom to the world, even if it kills them. And that’s OK.